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It’s tough enough to build a perfect sports car. The essentials include a frame that’s both lightweight and superrigid, a racetrack-ready suspension, brakes more tenacious than those on a mile of Santa Fe freight train, and an engine that combines high-drama power output, environment-friendly exhaust, and the basic reliability of a blacksmith’s anvil. Oh yeah, the perfect sports car also needs drop-dead looks, air conditioning that actually works, and a high-rpm wail sensuous enough to have you at 8000 rpm while backing out of the garage.

No mean feat, this perfect sports car, but Ferrari has created just such a machine: the F355 Berlinetta. Our July ’95 issue’s test raved about this Italian mid-engined coupe’s blistering performance, fawned over its creature comforts, and openly gushed about its Pininfarina-sculpted beauty. Whether trolling for action along Sunset Boulevard or blowing the snot out of some race car on the track, the F355 Berlinetta never makes excuses and never lets you down. So, herein lies the embodiment of the best Ferraris of all time: The F355 can not only trace its primordial DNA to the blood-engorged Testa Rossa race champion and masterpiece 275 GTB Lusso, but it operates with such a delicate touch that Madame Curie could set fast time down Coldwater Canyon on a moonless night-without the benefit of radium.

As tough as it is to create the perfect sports car, it’s even more agonizing yet to build that car as a convertible. Hack off a major structural member like the roof, and you can watch your beauty’s formerly taut framework turn into a metropolis of creaks and rattles. The resultant loss of torsional rigidity negatively affects ride, handling, and overall feel. It’s a cold, hard fact that only a select few convertibles in the world feel and handle as well as their coupe counterparts.

So we had our initial doubts about the new F355 Spider. With its curb weight vaunted to be the same as the Berlinetta (2976 pounds), how could Ferrari’s engineers have done the proper reinforcing job? Well, even if you recall that the first Ferrari ever built was topless, and that the most recent 348 Spider was a pretty solid package, you won’t likely be ready for the bank-vault-like structure of the latest Spider iteration. You can feel some extra weight in the doors as a result of the rework, but all of the other patches go wholly unnoticed-as it should be. Ferrari claims only a two-percent loss of torsional rigidity vis–vis the lift-out-roof-panel F355 GTS, but hasn’t commented about the loss as compared with the awesome Berlinetta. It can’t be much.

We also harbored some initial skepticism over the operation of the convertible top-power operated for the first time in a Ferrari, yet still requiring a bit of driver interaction. With memories of the weird monkey-motion gyrations required to operate the 348 Spider’s Nautilus-workout top mechanism, more than one MT editorial eyebrow was raised askew as details of the F355’s top operation were described. However, our fears were wholly unfounded.

To lower the top, both doors must be closed, the handbrake set, and the ignition key twisted to the “on” position. Release the single header latch and give a firm push up on the top to fold it partially back. Then activate the electric switch located on the rear of the center console and the lid automatically drops, pausing momentarily in mid-droop to move the seats forward about seven inches (the buckets are now electrically adjusted fore and aft, and feature unique backrest sculpting to facilitate the storage of the folded top) before articulating the stack of canvas to rest. The operation takes less than 20 seconds and will only require exiting the car if you own legs long enough to be scrunched by the auto-glide seats.

As the top lowers, the F355’s body lines metamorphose into an even more graceful and sinewy shape, if that’s possible. A leather boot easily affixes with snap-down fasteners and stores in the tiny front trunk when not in use. Surprisingly, wind buffeting at speeds up to about 80 mph is less harrowing than in many luxury convertibles outfitted with windblocker screen panels, although the Ferrari is devoid of such add-ons. Once the top is back up it snaps shut with a weathertight seal that keeps extraneous wind noise at bay.

While the upsides of this cabriolet’s design are obvious (and numerous), the only real negative aspects are the large rear blind spots created by the small, plastic rear window. This is largely a function of top-up styling dictates, as considerable effort was expended to have the shape of the raised softtop mimic the Berlinetta’s aluminum body lines-including its semi-flying rear buttresses.

Enough about shape and structure, let’s go tear the asphalt off a few hundred miles of rural roads. All the delectable mechanical components that make the F355 Berlinetta such a heart-pounder are fully intact here, from the technoparty of its longitudinally mounted 3.5-liter DOHC five-valve-per-cylinder, all-aluminum V-8, to the uniquely Ferrari feel of its transverse six-speed gearbox and gated shift bezel with polished aluminum shift knob. With 375 horsepower (at 8250 rpm) and 268 pound-feet of torque (at 6000 rpm) awaiting the slightest urging of your size-10, you’ll want to pump super-unleaded dinosaurs into its Bosch Motronic port fuel-injection system for hours on end.

The EPA claims 10/15 city/highway fuel economy figures for the thirsty F355, but we couldn’t restrain ourselves long enough to elicit anything even close to that. A morning of testing at Sears Point International Raceway followed by an afternoon of hightailing it to various Northern California wine-country photo locations left us laughing in a giddy hysteria, weak from the repeated adrenaline surges, and proud of the best use of fossil fuel since our ’96 Porsche 911 Turbo flog.

Because we were testing at a different location than our regular facility, we weren’t able to clock skidpad and slalom performance, however we doubt the Spider is anything off the 0.93g lateral acceleration, 70.8-mph slalom speed benchmark set by its fixed-roof sibling. On a dragstrip with less-than-optimal starting-line traction, the Spider smoked its 265/40ZR18 Pirelli P-Zeros wrapped around 18×10.0-inch magnesium five-spoke wheels for 75 feet on its way to a best 0-60-mph time of 4.9 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 13.4 seconds at 106.8 mph. Compared with our F355 Berlinetta test, that’s a performance 0.2 second slower from 0-60 mph and 0.6 second/3.4 mph less dynamic in the quarter. Braking tests experienced a similar level of decline due to the surface, lengthening the 60-0-mph stopping distance from the Berlinetta’s 118 feet to 126 feet for the Spider. Ferrari quotes the Spider’s acceleration and braking specs as identical to the Berlinetta’s, including its top speed of 183 mph.

Priced slightly higher than the Berlinetta, a $130,000 F355 Spider is an open-air, ultra-high-performance sports-car value. That the F355 can produce its blistering performances and traditional Italian driving feel while also maintaining such a high level of intercity civility and ease of operation is a tribute difficult to overstate.

There are only about 300 F355 Spiders coming to the States in ’96. It’s worth whatever you have to do to get one. Really.

1996 Ferrari News and Reviews

For a Ferrari owner, better than appreciating the marque's racing heritage is participating in it. That's what the Ferrari Challenge offers; 29 races across the planet (separate series for Europe West, Europe Central, USA, Japan, and the Pacific), with Ferrari owner/drivers behind the wheels of F355s and/or 348s, and select Ferrari dealers preparing the cars with Ferrari parts that meet…

It's tough enough to build a perfect sports car. The essentials include a frame that's both lightweight and superrigid, a racetrack-ready suspension, brakes more tenacious than those on a mile of Santa Fe freight train, and an engine that combines high-drama power output, environment-friendly exhaust, and the basic reliability of a blacksmith's anvil. Oh yeah, the perfect sports car also…

Ferrari's new F355 Spider is expected to find as many buyers in the U.S. as in all other worldwide markets combined, and its attractions are readily apparent: This is Ferrari's newest softtop model and its first ever with an electrically operated roof. It complements the F355 Berlinetta coupe, but will eventually replace the GTS lifttop variant.The Spider's five-layer roof, like…